WYD Day Three: Mercy and the Cross
The official welcome of Pope Francis to Kraków on Thursday evening was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit! I found myself in Blonia Park closely surrounded by people from Italy, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, and even Turkey which had a contingent of ninety Catholics. There are many barriers of language and culture between all of us, but there is more that unites: the joy of welcoming the Vicar of Christ and of celebrating the gift of our faith in Jesus.
As Pope Francis said at the beginning of his remarks: Jesus is the reason for this great gathering of young people, and the reason also for our hope and joy. Pope Francis centered his remarks on the mercy of God and devoted some time to elaborate what a merciful heart looks like. Giving and receiving mercy is not always comfortable. Indeed, Pope Francis stated last night that "a merciful heart knows how to renounce comforts."
It struck me forcefully that there is no greater symbol of mercy than the Cross, and yet it also signifies great suffering, a great renouncement of comfort. The shadow of the Cross of Christ has also hung over the followers of Jesus since the earliest days of the Church and we have been reminded of that here at World Youth Day. In his remarks on Wednesday evening during Adoration, Bishop Barron changed his prepared remarks in order to speak of the Cross, and how it is being lived out by Christians throughout the world, like the recently murdered Father Jacques in France. There is a large group of Iraqi pilgrims here with the Archbishop of Irbil and as we make the Way of the Cross today with Pope Francis, it is impossible not to recognize that they are literally undergoing the Via Dolorosa in their own lives. Suffering and the Cross are real and they are never far away from any one of us.
Pope Francis is visiting Auschwitz today to mourn the great suffering of the Jewish people and so many others, and yet also to be a witness of the transformative mercy of Christ on the Cross, which is the official theme for Friday here at World Youth Day. I just visited the same death camps with the College Knights of Columbus and the Sisters of Life. There is still a feeling of great darkness which hangs over the Nazi death camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau. I had arrived fully intending to take photos but immediately realized I would not be taking any.
I was hit with the sorrow of the site as soon as I entered the gate with the sign which reads in German: "Work Makes You Free"—certainly one of the most outrageous lies in the history of humanity. Yet, like so many of the Enemy's lies, God brought grace even there and turned the lie on its head. It was here that saints like Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe were set free definitively—released from their pain and suffering into the arms of the Eternal Father. It was here that they gave mercy to others by having a merciful heart which rejects comforts and thinks only of the other. We spent several hours there at the death camps in silence.
Truly, we are capable of unthinkable evil as humans if we turn from God. Yet the mercy of God is eternal. We were there at Auschwitz with 35 Sisters of Life who give witness to the gift of life by the radiant joy of their lives. Cardinal John O'Connor founded their community after visiting Dachau and seeing the ashes of countless people who were murdered there. After seeing up close the horrible result of the lack of respect for human life, he resolved to spend the rest of his life defending the dignity of every human life and the Sisters of Life came from this resolve. It was truly a grace to see these sisters walking through the camps praying for those who had died and for those who had killed them—literally bringing mercy into a place which had been one of the darkest places on earth.
As we left the camp, we passed five young Polish children returning home after playing in the fields. Their faces were tousled and muddy, but they smiled and waved and greeted us by saying: "God bless you!" Purity. Innocence. Joy.
Truly, the Mercy of God is eternal.
